


Syrup and Honey

by eurydicule



Category: Football RPF
Genre: AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-22
Updated: 2015-10-22
Packaged: 2018-04-27 15:29:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5054077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eurydicule/pseuds/eurydicule
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Villa is a lactose-intolerant officer. Silva is going to get that Cultural Studies PhD eventually. They are very much in love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Syrup and Honey

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nahco3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nahco3/gifts).



> Written in January 2015. Posted now because I'm never going to get around to expanding this the way I wanted to. 
> 
> Happy Birthday nahco3!!!!

When Villa comes home from a long day at work, Silva will usually be there, lounging in front of the television half-dead to the world or sitting on the couch, cross-legged, a pile of books to his left and right and an even bigger pile of papers in his lap.

Sometimes he'll be in the kitchen, windows open wide so Villa won't smell that he's managed to burn the leftovers again because he forgot about them as soon as he put them into the oven. (Villa smells it anyway.) 

Sometimes Villa will find him on the fire escape with Roque or Kun, perched as far away as politeness allows him to from the smoke of their cigarettes. 

No matter where Villa finds him in the end, Silva will always stop whatever he's doing to look up, smiling, at the sound of Villa's feet on the cheap PVC floor. Most days he'll ask him how his day was right away, inquiring after Iker or another officer, reaching out for Villa's hands because they are always the first to suffer if something goes awry. 

Not today.

 

Villa frowns, the exclamation mark of his greetings reverberating in the cramped hallway unheard and drops his coat off with a heavy thud. He's two steps into the living room before he turns around, goes back to pick it up and hangs it on the coat rack.

"David?"

Still no response.

Sometimes when Villa comes home, Silva isn't there, hanging back late after classes or a tutorial, never the one to turn any of his student's questions, any of his thesis supervisor's requests down. But Villa has made a point of memorizing Silva's schedule for the week this time and he knows that Silva ought to be here right now, excluding the possibilty of improptu runs for lemon cakes or highlighters.

 

He finds Silva eventually, the sound of fingers flying over a keyboard giving him away, crouched in the corner between that bookshelf that always looks ready to fall apart at the slightest touch and Villa's guitar case. His seating arrangement doesn't look comfortable and is probably due to the fact that his laptop is running out of battery, at least judging by the cable that extends from where Silva is sitting to the closest plug. (Silva always complains that the cable is too short to use it properly. He complains even more when Villa comes home with a better, longer one. He always manages to lose the cable somewhere around campus within a week and feels terrible about it for another two. Somehow it always comes back to the short cable this way.) 

Silva's small figure is ridiculed by the immense size of Villa's Beats by Dr. Dre headphones, audibly pumping some sugary-sweet pop music that must be courtesy of Silva's music collection. Villa has stopped asking questions in some aspects of their relationship.

When he taps Silva on the shoulder, the other man jumps, then presses pause on his phone in a gesture of recognition of who's talking to him. But he doesn't turn around to say hi. His head makes a vague gesture towards the laptop screen; he's busy. Villa doesn't like the way Silva's eyes stay glued to the screen, the blueish light making the dark circles under his eyes stand out even more prominently.

"Hey."

Silva nods, but keeps on writing.

Papers are scattered all around him, littered with angry red annotations and Villa knows that this is Silva commenting on his own work because his thesis supervisor always uses black ink (that's how much he likes him, that's how much everyone can't help but like him). It's clear that Villa is distracting him, but somehow he can't bring himself to leave Silva to it just yet. Villa squeezes Silva's shoulder once, beckoning him to look up and when Silva doesn't react accordingly, Villa decidedly reaches out for the headphones' cord and unplugs them from Silva's phone.

"Have you eaten yet?"

Silva whines and fingers for the cord of his headphones instead of answering Villa's question, his lips forming the words he's planning to write next but can't because he needs to listen to music while he works. Villa gives it a little tug before he lets it go, using Silva's momentary distraction to peak at the laptop's screen. It's not as if he's following exactly what Silva's doing, having turned his back on secondary education two semesters in and to Pepe's great frustration. ("If only you cared half as much about Economics as you care about that boy." "If only you cared half as much about your own damn love life as you do about mine." "Shit... did you just say 'love'?!") What he's able to track, however, is the number of pages written in the bottom left corner of the document. For the past weeks he's seen it growing more and more, proportionally to Silva growing more and more distant and withdrawn.

"Have you eaten yet?"

Silva shakes his head, clearly annoyed now and Villa can feel it, so he drags the back of his hand across Silva's cheekbone and leaves him to it.

 

The state of the kitchen is just as he left it in the morning. The mug Villa used for his morning coffe, a thin dark circle at its bottom, drained to the last life-infusing drop, still stands perched on the kitchen counter. He's been willing any of the stray cats frequenting their place ever since Silva had taken to leave his untouched breakfast on the windowsill, with the window wide open, to throw the mug off the table. Any excuse to go after them with renewed vigour. 

Villa frowns at Silva's untouched soggy cereal and checks the fridge, pleased with what he finds. His mama would have been horrified at the way he cracks eggs sloppily, yolk running down the side of the bowl, how he pours milk into the mix and slugs some more of it straight from the carton, about the way he actually uses a cup to measure sugar and flour instead of adding some going by instinct. Then again, his mama has probably never stopped being horrified at the mere thought of him ever since that senior year walk-in incident involving lots of Mori and very little clothes, so he guesses he'll be fine. This is not what this is about, anyway.

 

This is about the way he finally, finally, manages to pry Silva's attention away from the laptop when he walks back into the room with a pile of pancakes on a scratched plate, fork and knife not matching because he isn't completey obnoxious and this is life. There are no strawberries and no whipped cream because Silva promises to pick up new batteries for the mixer every other day and then has his mind wrapped around Butler again so he forgets to do it. But there is a momentary spark of something like life in Silva's eyes, his nose wrinkling in the most handsome way as he sniffs at the air and maybe the artificial lights of the city outside hit his head just right for a second to make the picture perfect.

"Eat."

The headphones come off, but there's a little bit of hesitation in Silva's posture still. Villa has learnt to celebrate the small victories, like getting Silva's fingers to stop typing just for a second, to get his mind off of that PhD for a while.

"Don't make me feed you..."

Silva's index finger comes down on the touchpad, hitting the 'Save' icon before actually pushing the laptop away and that's how Villa knows that he's trying really hard, because there's no way he could have been finished with a paragraph or another chapter just now. But he's making an effort here. For Villa's sake.

"Is that a promise?"

"It's a threat. ... This is with soy milk, by the way, yours went bad. I hope it tastes okay."

The way Silva ducks his head makes Villa go back on his words again and stumble over how harsh they must sound out loud when he can hear them so clearly laced with worry in his own mind. He sets the plate down on the floor between them, more words coming out because he wants to get it right this time.

"I tried to call on lunch break, you didn't answer the phone. ... I thought you might be in a meeting or something, that's why I didn't try again. I did not want to disturb you."

Silva reaches out for Villa's hands then and they're a little cold but smooth, the way they run over Villa's palms and knuckles sure and attentive.

"Thank you."

When Silva reaches out for the plate, Villa hands it over with what he hopes is a reassuring smile, signalling Silva that it's alright.

 

(Everything's always going to be alright.)


End file.
